Packaging effort to add support for fingerprint-based authentication to Ubuntu

To find out the ID of your fingerprint reader, run the “lsusb” command and look into the sixth column of the output.

Overview of open-source fingerprint recognition projects:

1. FPrint
FPrint is the most recent and most advanced project (yet slightly dormant at the moment). It supports a wide range of hardware and sports a full integration into the GNOME desktop environment.

2. Fingerprint GUI
Fingerprint GUI is based on FPrint's shared library. Although it offers slightly less seamless GNOME integration, thanks to inclusion of non-free drivers it supports a number of readers manufactured by UPEK and not supported by FPrint. The design goal of Fingerprint GUI is to include as many available drivers as possible (even proprietary ones) and thus to gain a much wider range of supported hardware than any purely open-source project can achieve.

3. ThinkFinger
ThinkFinger is an abandoned project, supporting only reader 0483:2016, used in many IBM/Lenovo laptops. Obsoleted by the FPrint project.
Packages for ThinkFinger are included in the standard Ubuntu repositories.

4. BioAPI
Old & dead.

Support for other fingerprint readers
==============================
Users often ask how it is looking with support for readers not listed above. Here is the answer:

Fingerprint GUI is happy to integrate any proprietary drivers that the manufacturers make freely available. Vendors that have promised to release drivers for Linux are:
• Validity (original ETA Q4 2012, the driver should support VFS301, 5011, 5111 and 5131, in addition to VFS451, 471 and 491)
• EgisTec